We're 75% done with the year, and Samsung is not quite the media
darling it once was.

Sales of Samsung's products
remain solid, but in terms of living up to the hype, Samsung has
come up short.

The latest example of Samsung's
failure to truly innovate is the Galaxy Gear, its smart
watch.

The New York Times'
David Pogue says in a video, "The design is
inconsistent and frustrating." In his written review he adds,
"Nobody will buy this watch, and nobody
should."

The Galaxy Gear is bulky and
useless. It needs a phone to be even moderately useful. But it
only works with one phone, the Galaxy Note 3. (Samsung says it
will eventually support other phones, but we're skeptical.) Even
with a phone, the Gear doesn't make life better or easier. You're
stilll pulling out the phone constantly.

Samsung, for all of its
smartphone sales, andsmart
marketing, is still seen as
a copy-cat company. It waits for Apple to release a new gadget,
or new software, then it quickly emulates the best features for
its own products.

The Gear was Samsung's opportunity to prove that it could be out
front, and beat Apple. It was a chance to prove that it had a
real grasp on what consumers want, and it could deliver
innovative, leading technology.

Instead, according to the New York Times and other publications,
the Gear is a dud.

Vlad Savov at The Verge
summed up his review of the Gear saying, "Samsung
describes it as a companion device, and the Gear is indeed
chronically dependent on an umbilical link to another Samsung
device, but it never left me feeling like it was
a helpful companion. The
notifications are Orwellian, the media controls are exiguous, and
the app selection has no substance to underpin the hype.
Samsung’s attempt to turn the Gear into a style icon is also
unlikely to succeed, owing to the company’s indecision about its
target demographic. Trying to please all tastes has resulted in a
predictably charmless and soulless product."

The Gear isn't Samsung's only critical flop this year,
either.

The Galaxy S4, its flagship smartphone failed to impress
reviewers.

Walt Mossberg
said of the phone that it had "especially weak" "gimmicky"
software and that people in the market for an Android phone
should, "carefully consider the more polished-looking, and
quite capable, HTC One, rather than defaulting to
the latest Samsung."

Consumers didn't take Mossberg's advice. HTC is in a
tailspin, and Samsung's sales remain strong.

So, it's not like Samsung is stumbling badly. But, in terms of
the narrative that Samsung is a leading technology company that's
in the class of Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon...
well, the Galaxy Gear won't help.